I downloaded this yesterday to test it on my laptop. I've gotten a bit tired of dealing with gnome-power-manager and it's horrible screen brightness problems, stealing the focus of my keyboard and such. I have to say, I'm actually pleasantly surprised by KDE 4.2. They seem to have fixed some things in Kwin that really bothered me before, and the themes are quite elegant.

That being said, this wouldn't be a proper post without discussing some bugs I've noticed, though I have a feeling most of these are problems that KDE needs to fix. For one, the screen brightness control in the Guidance power manager does not work for me. Doesn't matter if I'm plugged into a wall or if I'm on battery, neither of the sliders work, nor does Fn+up or down. Also, when switching the CPU power mode from "dynamic" to "powersave" (I do this from the battery icon in the system tray), it appears to jump into screensaver mode, which locks the screen and makes me enter a password to get back to the desktop.

I've also been messing around with the compositing settings (OpenGL vs. XRender) and have noticed some bugs there too, but again, probably nothing the Mint team is interested in fixing. Finally, the widgets in Firefox (checkboxes, radio and scroll buttons, etc.) look pretty nasty. This is most likely an issue of integration with GTK.

I posted a few bugs earlier on the forum http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=109&t=22736#p133438, but now that this bug thread has been made available, re posting them here.I'm also facing the issue dberg918 mentioned above regarding the power manager. When I enter the password and log in for the first time (as the KDE splash screen shows up), either the power manager or screen saver (which I tried to set to off), kicks in immediately and locks the screen. So essentially, I need to enter my password once again to reach the desktop.

2) I'm unable to drag and move the panel widgets even though they are not locked to the panel.

Solved. You need to open panel settings option, and only while it is on, the unlocked widgets can be moved around. I know, its my typical Windows/Gnome mentality that I should be able to drag widgets on the panel as long as they are unlocked, so anyway, this is a typical GUI design scenario, and not a bug. I don't want to comment on which of the above is a better design case

A secondary observation is that changing the panel height changes some of the icons displayed on the panel. I tested this after changing my icon set to Linux Mint KDE 4 set. For eg. the show desktop is a small blue rectangle icon when the panel height is set very small. Increasing the panel height changes it to a green icon with desk lamp pic. The home folder icon changes from blue to green (i think the first icon belongs to the default Oxygen set, whereas the second icon set belongs to the Linux Mint KDE 4 set I've selected). My guess is that KDE is determining at real time the best icon set to display for any given panel height, and defaulting to the Oxygen icon set when it finds its unable to display the LM KDE 4 set on the panel. But I don't know if this is a desired behavior or not, considering how many folks want their icons to look in just one particular way.

3) The system date time settings is unable to contact the time zone server, and doesn't let me change the time and zone settings (internet is connected).

Haven't been able to fix this. Tried all the 4 servers listed in the dropdowns for various regions, but none of them connected.

4) Some of the KDE apps are simply quitting at times (not always) without any notification when I click on them.

This got a bit better after I downloaded and installed all the recommended patches from Mint repo., but occasionally still happens. Mind that its not an applet crash, which throws a bug trace screen. This happens usually when I try to start some app. The icon animation kicks in, a window tab is displayed on the panel, but can't be opened, and simply disappears after some time.

5) Desktop effects are not enabled, and reports that the Compiz engine needs to be installed first (I've been assuming that Compiz should be available by default in the install packages, so please correct me if I'm wrong). Apparently this is an Ubuntu 8.10 issue, though I'm not on any Intel Graphics card, but a GeForce 8600GT. I'm going to try out this suggestion viewtopic.php?f=59&t=20538#p126147 and post back later.

As suggested by locutus in another thread, I tried using fusion-icon and it was able to load up Compiz, but there are occasionally some interface issues. Like, Konqueror and Firefox windows do not display the top panel (i.e. where the window name and the _,[],X buttons exist). I had to close them using file-exit. This usually occurs whenever I choose Compiz, and then select reload display manager option in Fusion-icon. Although, desktop effects app. still shows that the Compiz engine needs to be installed.

6) I can increase the Folder View widget size horizontally by dragging on the [] control, but can't increase the size vertically. Dragging downwards on the [] control reduces the folder view widget height. This widget also cannot be re-sized by dragging at the borders. I guess I'll be reverting back to the traditional desktop http://hanswchen.wordpress.com/2009/01/ ... in-kde-42/ option for now and live with that.

Reverted to folder view as default, and liking it .

Oxygen/Ozone have some display kinks where the interface looks rough (eg. open Compiz Settings, and go to General settings. The tabs displayed there will show what I mean, i.e. the tabs look as if their ends are overlapping with the neighboring tabs).

I'll post as and when I find other issues. Thanks once again for an awesome release . I'm really liking KDE 4.2 in general. It looks much more polished than Gnome.

Is it me or there is no photo management utility in Mint 6 Kde Rc1? I was trying to find digikam and got nothing. As you can see in the link below, digikam 0.10.0 and kipi plugins 0.2.0 will be released sunday, 8th of March. Will we be able to get it soon?

Hi,I believe that these bugs are those of KDE4, and I don't know if you can do something about it.However:- In the energy control, there are different profiles do not seem to work at all. ES. They say "if I press the power button ..." but turning off the pc with any choice.- Changing the screen saver, always to the control center kde, kde often hangs with a white screen.- The Mixer window appears at startup for no reason. And the main channel change to pcm automatic.- Configuring a printer on windows with samba, not the button to browse the folders on the server.- The network manager tells me that the network is weak, although the rooter is above my head.

Indeed, it seems a good distro on which you installed KDE4. I have done with others, the problems are these ... at the moment.

Are there two power managers?If I single click on the icon in the system tray it pulls up "Guidance Power Manager"--but if I go to System Settings/Advanced/Power Management it pulls up another power manager (maybe called PowerDevil). I get oddly timed screen dimming on my laptop.

Thanks for this excellent release! Nice smooth out of the box KDE experience! The only issue I have found is that logging out can be slow. It can take 10 to seconds to complete the logout process. Probably more of a KDE issue than a Mint one. But I thought I'd mention it. My hardware is an Acer Aspire AST180 desktop with an AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ CPU.

First of all, thanks for the KDE RC. I've been using it since the weekend posted from the other thread. It is by far the best out of any other KDE 4.2 out there. I would not use any of the other "real" releases as they all had bugs of some sort. I have been using this "RC" as my main desktop OS without those problems.

With that, I don't know if this is a Mint thing or a KDE 4.2 bug. I have read that it is KDE related. But the power management for displays does not work. What I mean is that my monitor does not suspend.

Here are my settings.- I have the screensaver set to turn on in 8 minutes.- Standby after 20 minutes.- Suspend after 30 minutes.- Power off is disabled.

I have read that if you have the screensaver set to turn on before any of the power management settings the monitor WILL NOT suspend. If you disable the screensaver then it will suspend. Well that is dumb since if you will either have no saver with suspend. Or a saver but no suspend. What is the point in trying to save my monitor then?

I have experienced this in other distros with KDE 4.x But could someone give me some insight in to how to set this up correctly. There are two power managers. One under Display and the other under Advanced Power management (Power Devil). Which one do I use or do I use both?

Regardless, until they get this bug fixed it won't matter which one I use but would be nice to know why there are two and which one to use.

Thanks and good job!!!

EDIT: I forgot to mention that while logging/restart/shut down there is about a 10 second pause before it starts to log out/restart/shutdown.

Last edited by WildSioux on Wed Mar 04, 2009 12:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.

1) My screen brightness gets reset back to the lowest setting every time I login to the system. The brightness gets reset exactly at the time when the KDE splash shows the desktop being loaded, so I hope that narrows it down a bit.

My Felicia KDE RC sports the same problem I had with Kubuntu 8.10 with KDE 4.2; i.e., graphical corruption of the desktop when I launch Openoffice.org The OOo window decorations flicker or disappear or corrupt, and the same happens everywhere I put the mouse pointer, bottom panel included; so, Ctrl+Shift+Bspace is necessary to have an usable desktop again.If I do not launch anything OOo, the desktop is stable. I have an nvidia 7600GS with proprietary drivers correctly installed, no Compiz but just the default kWin settings.

Since it happened exactly the same with KDE 4.2 on Kubuntu, it should be a known problem (but I didn't find anything about it)

Mint Assistant runs at install but it is missing from the kmenu and won't run from terminal.

Regarding power management: I disabled PowerDevil in the services manager and use Guidance Power Manager from the system tray to configure power management. This resolved all issues, no more random dimming of the screen.

I switched the default file manager to Kong and now want to revert back to Dolphin but for the life of me I can't find a way back!I've been playing with Amarok and not real happy with the new release. Has crashed several times now. I installed the older version from symaptic and is working flawless. Not sure if it's KDE 4.2 or Amarok 2 that's causing the problems.

My Felicia KDE RC sports the same problem I had with Kubuntu 8.10 with KDE 4.2; i.e., graphical corruption of the desktop when I launch Openoffice.org The OOo window decorations flicker or disappear or corrupt, and the same happens everywhere I put the mouse pointer, bottom panel included; so, Ctrl+Shift+Bspace is necessary to have an usable desktop again.If I do not launch anything OOo, the desktop is stable. I have an nvidia 7600GS with proprietary drivers correctly installed, no Compiz but just the default kWin settings.

Since it happened exactly the same with KDE 4.2 on Kubuntu, it should be a known problem (but I didn't find anything about it)

It is an Nvidia issue. Upgrading to the 180.xx drivers from the Nvidia site will fix it.

KDE 4.2 packages in Mint have been taken from the unstable experimental repository. If you enable the "backport" Repositorys you will get the latest (more stable ??) packages and further updates. So please Boo, enable the backport repository (not the "proposed" one) by default in the final version of Mint KDE4 or just release all updated packages on the DVD ( I don´t understand why you deliver the DVD without any updates)

Paul_Vandenberg wrote:It is an Nvidia issue. Upgrading to the 180.xx drivers from the Nvidia site will fix it.

Paul

Thank you very much, I'm going to do it now!

FIXED, no more corruption on my screen! YAY!

re: Nvidia 180.xx drivers. What drivers did you install? I have the 180.29 currently installed and it is running fine. I did notice yesterday some corruption on the taskbar and in firefox. But I believe this was caused by me installing SynCE to sync up my phone. After uninstalling it, the corruption has disappeared. BTW, I have found the 180.29 driver to be the most stable yet. There is a 180.35 out on NVnews. But that causes massive errors on KDE and everyone is staying away from it.

++ I don't know if this is a bug or not. But in firefox, the scrollbars and some page forms with buttons sometimes hide . Rolling the mouse over them brings them back. I clicked on the "Install Scrollbar Fix" in System Settings>>Appearance>>GTK Styles>>Firefox and Thunderbird. But it still does it sometimes.

++ I had mentioned that my monitor will not sleep with screensaver enabled. Any idea on this?

Amarok 2.0 - Dynamic PlaylistsOne of my favorite features in Amarok (and Rythymbox for that matter) is dynamic playlists. I cannot get them to work in Amarok 2.0. What I am able to do in RythymBox and Amarok 1.4 is make a playlist of all songs from this artist, or from this genre, so that any songs that match any of the criteria are included. I can't get Amarok 2.0 to do this or even close. I tried just one criteria (album), set the proportion bar to 100%, which to me would mean that 100% of the songs in the playlist will include this criteria. It does not pick up all the songs of this album and further includes songs that doe not meet the criteria. I have tried posting to the Amarok forum, and let's just say they are not "Minty Friendly" to noobs like me there. Has anyone else tried to use dynamic playlists and if so is there a special trick to it? I like using the latest version of a software, so if I can figure out dynamic playlists (one of my favorite features), I would like to stick with 2.0 rather than go back to 1.4.